© Copyright 2010 by Entropy Enigneering
Hunter – TV
We got left on the cutting room floor, but if we hadn’t, you would have seen Hunter type something into a
computer with the text magically appearing on the screen as if it were being typed. You didn’t think that actors
had to type accurately for each take, did you? I made a little scripting program that emulated someone typing,
and we just reset it at the beginning of each take. We had the tough part of hitting the space bar at the
appropriate time in the scene.
The NEW Mary Tyler Moore show – TV
Mary’s kid was having an online chat on one of those newfangled computerized BBS systems. She had to get
onto the computer and find out what was going on. So we wrote a BBS emulator to show the whole
conversation. On cue, of course. Even different colors. This was pretty high tech for those days!
30 Something – TV
This was a biggy. I got to sit in on a meeting with the director talking about the graphics that were needed for this
big scene. I wasn’t the biggest fan of the show but I had seen commercials for it. I did recognize some of the
actors that were milling about. This scene was about someone getting into a car accident. My graphics were
going to be used to put the medical records up on the screen, and the big show was going to be putting up the
words, after a pause, “Not Insured.” You know the scene I’m talking about. So I listened to the requirements, and
already had the code from the Mary Tyler Moore show done, so I innocently asked if he wanted the Not Insured
to flash. “YOU CAN MAKE IT FLASH!?!?!” The rest is TV history.
Space Rangers – TV
We’ll get back to this later. On to some movies.